JAZZ CORNER: RENEE OLSTEAD UPDATE!

JAZZ CORNER: RENEE OLSTEAD UPDATE!

Renee Olstead is an incredible singer ... I've seen her in concert in some great jazz venues and she is always amazing ... 

Uber-producer David Foster, who discovered and produced Michael Buble, also unleashed Renee producing her brilliant 2004 self-titled CD and it’s 2011 follow up, Skylark – both featuring a lineup of standards imaginatively arranged to display the range and depth of Renee’s voice. Touring with jazz trumpeter Chris Botti, Renee has recently take Europe by storm.

Her new single, She’s Got Your Name, is Renee’s first release since her 2011 Skylark album, and is part of a new EP scheduled to be released in early 2013. Produced by Tommy King, with original songs written by Renee and King, it will capture the sound of 50’s and 60’s girl groups such as The Ronnettes and The Crystals.

PULP NOW: THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF THIBAUT CORDAY!

PULP NOW: THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF THIBAUT CORDAY!

 

THEODORE ROSCOE

 

FOUR VOLUMES PUBLISHED BY ALTUS PRESS

 

I read a lot of pulp stories and am always delighted to see publishers such as Altus Press and Black Dog Books reprinting affordable, beautifully produced, collections from pulp masters.  In particular this year, Altus Press has given us four volumes in The Complete Adventures Of Thibaut Corday And The Foreign Legion – featuring all twenty stories  originally appearing in issues of Argosy Magazine between 1929 and 1939.

 

The fourth and final volume, The Heads Of Sergeant Baptiste, has just hit the bookshelves and contains my favorite Foreign Legion story, The Wonderful Lamp of Thibaut Corday – the best retelling of the story of Aladdin’s lamp I have ever come across.

 

Theodore Roscoe, the creator of the old Legionnaire Thibaut Corday, was a master pulp writer on par with my other favorite adventure pulp wordsmiths, H. Beresford Jones and Talbot Mundy.  Roscoe had the ability to make the reader feel every grain of desert sand and every ray of scorching sun.  Flowing from Roscoe’s pen, the Foreign Legion was never more romantic or glorified.

 

Each volume in this series is full of storytelling gems as the old Legionnaire himself, Thibaut Corday weaves his spellbinding art in small cafes over horded drinks and one-up-manship.  But the true heart of these stories has the reader waiting breathlessly for Corday to explain how the fantastic happenings he has just described have a possible common and plausible explanation – pure storytelling genius.

 

The Complete Adventures Of Thibaut Corday And The Foreign Legion ( Volume 1: Better Than Bullets, Volume 2: Toughest In The Legion, Volume 3: The Kid And The Cutthroats, and Volume 4: The Heads Of Sergeant Baptiste) are a must for every pulp fan who thrives on armchair adventure from a day when the world still held mysteries and all things were possible.  Pick any volume and lose yourself in some of the best pulp writing ever ...

 

HARDBOILED CORNER: KELLER IS BACK!

HARDBOILED CORNER: KELLER IS BACK!

HIT ME ~ LAWRENCE BLOCK

I’ve been a fan of Lawrence Block’s ever since I picked up a paperback copy of his first Mathew Scudder novel, Sins of the Fathers, way back in 1976.  Since then, I’ve read and enjoyed much of his prodigious output – making my way back through his prior books as well as trying to keep up with his new series characters.

Block has also had a significant impact on my own writing career.  His two collections of his Writer’s Digest columns (Telling Lies For Fun And Profit and Spider Spin Me A Web) have become constant rereadable touchstones, and his writing workshop made a deep impression upon me.

Still, while I enjoy Block’s novels, for me his short stories are where I find the true delight in his writings.  His concise twists and characterizations, his constant playing against type and expectations, are clearly displayed in two particular series – his stories featuring lawyer Martin Ehrengraf and those featuring the hit man known as Keller.

Both of these characters have skewed moral centers.  Their specific disaffections enable then to justify their actions to themselves and subsequently to the reader.  Neither character can be simply labeled as sociopathic.  Neither has a lack of emotional feeling, but rather a different paradigm through which they experience their feelings.  Through the social derangement of these characters, Block forces the reader to look at his own actions and moral decision making process, revealing weaknesses and questions not usually examined in the light of day.

Hit Me is the new collection of Keller tales, which will be available from Mulholland books in January 2013.  Like its predecessors – the three episodic novels Hit Man, Hit List, and Hit Parade, and one full length novel, Hit and Run – Hit Me moves Keller through a moral quagmire of tales, each a little different and each tied more and more closely to Keller’s fascination and obsession with stamp collecting.  It is this play of heinous, cold-blooded, crime juxtaposed against the dubious everyday pleasures of a collector’s mania that causes endless fascination – the tales are read not just to find out how Keller commits and gets away with his latest sanction, but equally to find out if he will get the current philatelic oddity he is pursuing.

If you haven’t been introduce to Block – and how could any mystery fan worthy of the name not have been introduced to Block’s body of work – or if you are one of his legion of fans, Hit Me will continue your love affair with Block’s words and characters.